


i just might love you forever, hope you warm up to me (j/d)

by subparauthorings



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff and Angst, In a good way though, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Reunions, donna has two excellent children who inherited her 'criminal intelligence', gratuitous kennedy references, gratuitous massachusetts, josh teaches at harvard because of course he does
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22450090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subparauthorings/pseuds/subparauthorings
Summary: In some other universe, Jack Reese never wrote the report that had led to his transfer in early 2003. Donna was never forced to defend him to CJ concerning his screwup with the Post because he was never bitter enough to make that comment. Jack proposed to Donna the following Christmas, and Donna understood then that she needed to grow up, get over her stupid crush on her boss, and give herself wholly to a man she did truly love. So she said yes.Josh quit the West Wing. Donna didn’t.This story begins sixteen years later, Christmas 2019, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.(this fic is a personal love letter from me to the west wing, mallrat, kennedy mythology and procrastination. it’s also my welcome back to writing after a more than two-year hiatus, so wish me luck!)
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	i just might love you forever, hope you warm up to me (j/d)

**Author's Note:**

> timeline things:  
> \- canon compliant till inauguration: part one. canon divergent until the benign prerogative (i.e. important plot points still occur, but jack and donna are still dating). au from then on as josh quits his job (no supremes, no gaza, no heart attack, no peace talks). set in 2019. 
> 
> other things:  
> \- hi! love u thanks for being here  
> \- not beta'd because i don't have enough faith in myself to ask for one  
> \- this is my hallmark movie version of josh and donna i guess  
> \- yes i'm working on the you've got mail au  
> \- enjoy xoxo

On her father’s side, Donna had an aunt called Bridget. This was never of particular consequence to her life 9other than occasionally seeing her at Christmases and family reunions; the lady lived in New England) until Donna started working at the White House in 1999. After this, her Aunt Bridget had corralled her with stories about the family name and history - her father’s family were from a town called New Ross in County Wexford, Ireland, and had immigrated in the 1840s to Boston. This was her long-winded way of saying that she believed them to be related to J.F.K’s great-grandmother, Bridget Kennedy, who immigrated from this town around the same time. Donna didn’t believe it, if only because Bridget was a ridiculously common Irish first name for girls and there were a lot of Irish immigrants to Boston in the 1840s. 

However, when Donna’s Aunt Bridget passed away in 2019, Donna found herself picking up a Kennedy biography in a bookshop in September and devouring three more between then and Thanksgiving. So when her brothers failed to successfully organise a family Christmas reunion due to their wildly differing schedules - her parents had had to retire the tradition of Christmas at their family home when they retired to Florida in 2012 - she decided to take her son and daughter to Massachusetts for Christmas that year. Donna had always been a history aficionado, and she was feeling kindly toward the cosy warmth of a snowy Massachusetts Christmas, rather than the dry blizzard season expected in Madison (where her brothers Will and Sean still lived), or the humid heat of Florida (at her parents’ retirement condo), or the bustling claustrophobia of San Francisco (where her brother Tony now resided). Besides, she saw enough of her brothers anyway. (Maybe not her parents, but she was working on that. Donna clashed with her mother more than she liked to admit.)

So Donna decided to take herself, her son and her daughter to Boston for Christmas, planning an overnight stay in Cape Cod, mostly so she could visit Hyannis Port and quell her curiosity. She hoped to visit Brookline as well, but she figured that may be pushing the patience and boredom limits of her thirteen-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son. 

Chess and Jack Jnr were the best things in Donna’s life, by far. Chess, who was named after Donna's maternal grandmother Francesca, was born in 2006, the day before Arnold Vinick won the general election. Donna had already cast her vote absentee, but she had always felt a flicker of guilt about keeping Jack holed up in her hospital room all day with their newborn daughter so he wouldn’t go out and vote Republican. It hadn’t mattered anyway, Vinick had beat Bob Russell with a landslide majority. 

Jack had proposed to Donna at Christmas, a year after a helicopter had whisked her from the White House at Leo McGarry’s urging to the very inn which he would propose a year later. They were married in the summer of 2005, and all of her friends and family had come, with one notable exception. Donna still didn’t much bear thinking of him. 

He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named had quit the White House in the January of 2005, giving a month’s notice before, in essence, vanishing from the face of the planet. CJ had been promoted to Josh’s old job, and they had hired a new press secretary named Annabeth, a tiny woman with a will of steel and almost as powerful a presence as CJ, although in vastly different ways. When CJ had taken over Josh’s job, she and Donna had immediately sat down and had a conversation. CJ knew Donna wanted to go back to school and finish her degree, and as CJ was also fully aware of Donna’s hyper-competence, agreed to cut down her hours to 25 per week which allowed her to go back and finish her degree. Georgetown accepted her previous credits and excellent credentials (a personal reference from the current White House Deputy Chief of Staff and former Press Secretary did, in fact, go a long way) and she graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Politics and Government in 2007. The following September, she had taken a job as Congresswoman Andy Wyatt’s Chief of Staff. 

During Transition in 2006, Jack was supposed to be reassigned by the Department of Defence as commanding officer of a naval fleet in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Bahrain; he deferred this for eighteen months claiming family support. Donna hadn’t wanted him to go - they had a daughter barely two months old, and they had only been married a year and a half. So he had deferred his reassignment, but it had come around again in the July of 2009, and this time Donna had been forced to let him leave. Unbeknownst to either of them, Donna had been a month or so pregnant at the time. 

If someone asked Donna what the most difficult time of her life was, she would reply that it was during her pregnancy with Jack Jnr, for more than one reason. The first was her horrific morning sickness. The second her being faced already with single-parenting a preschooler and working in a high-stress job. The third was that just after Donna found out she was pregnant, in the August of 2009, Donna had received a visit from Admiral Fitzwallace. The commanding vessel of Jack’s naval fleet had been lost in a freak motor accident. Jack hadn’t even known that he was to be a parent again. 

The Department of Defence had paid Donna hefty compensation for her loss, most of which went into an account for Chess and Jack Jnr’s college costs. She had also received a medal of valour for her late husband, which she still kept on the mantle of her D.C. townhouse. It didn’t make her loss any easier, however. A widow at thirty-four. It was laughable. 

A small part of Donna had always felt wracked with guilt over Jack’s death, because a month or so earlier, they had parted on frosty terms. Donna had blamed him (irrationally, she knew) for having to go at all. Of course, they had talked on the phone and via Skype in the time between, but she never apologised, and she would never forget that she refused to hug him goodbye. 

Now, ten years later, Donna was a successful lobbyist. In 2010, she picked up a second job as a one-day-a-week Congressional Liaison for EMILY’s List while still working for Andy, but eventually was promoted to Managing Political Director of the D.C. branch, where she still worked today. 

Donna usually tried not to think about He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Her feelings, like a pent-up whirling ball of hurt, anger and resentment would swirl in her stomach whenever she did. On the one hand, she was adult enough to understand that if she had kept working for him at the White House, if he hadn’t quit when he did, she wouldn’t have her degree or any of the career successes she had attained as a result of it. On the other hand, he had been her closest friend, her confidante, the person who believed in her when there was nothing to believe in, and he had left a letter on his desk for her on his last day with a bouquet of flowers and no forwarding address. That was all seven years of friendship had gotten her. And moreover, he had told everyone else about his leaving months in advance, making her look even more the fool.

She knew that CJ and Toby had kept in vague touch with him, but she had never asked. She hadn’t wanted to know. Because on the third (largely ignored) hand, Donna had said yes to marrying Jack in part because she recognised that it was time to put to bed her stupid schoolgirl crush on her best friend. She wanted to devote herself wholly to this man who loved her, and in complete honesty, it had been easier to do that when she didn’t have a single idea where He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named was. 

But, as aforementioned, she tried not to think about him.

So, Donna packed up her winter clothes and her children and took them on a Christmas vacation. They were staying in a cute little bed and breakfast in Cambridge, in a twin room with a sofa pullout. Her kids got a single bed each and she was curled up, catlike, on the pullout which whilst somewhat rickety was larger than the nominally nicer single beds in the centre of the room. On the 21st, the three of them headed out to Cape Cod for their overnight stay. 

“Why are we going out to the beach again?” Jack asked between sucks on the straw of his juice box. “It’s winter. We can’t even swim.”

“It’s because of President Kennedy,” Chess replied solemnly. She was bright for her age, in all the special placement classes, but she sometimes freaked people out with how perceptive and solemn she could be. “Mom wants to see where he spent his holidays, like what we’re doing now.”

As she was just over three years older than her brother, she would often treat him as though he were a generation her junior. Donna supposed there would come a time where their age difference didn’t seem insurmountable to Chess, but having grown up with older siblings, she know it wouldn’t be for a long time yet. 

“Why does Mom care? He’s dead anyway!”

Donna didn’t even look up from her book. “Because history is interesting, Jack, and you should know some. It helps you understand the present more.”

“I like history,” Jack protested. “We’re doing Ancient Egypt in school. But I understand that because it’s like stories. But this is people, so I don’t get it.”

Donna stifled a laugh, remembering what her mother had said about the strange things Donna and her brothers would say when they were small. “All stories are from people, honey.”

-

When they stepped off the train at Hyannis, Donna’s first priority was finding somewhere to each lunch -or rather, it was her children’s first priority, which immediately made it hers. She had learned very quickly that if her kids weren’t fed, they would be impossible to deal with for the rest of the day.  _I wonder where they get that from_ , Donna thought dryly. She hauled up her suitcase in one hand and clasped her son’s gloved pam in the other, making her way into the semi-bustling downtown. 

After walking ten minutes or so in the brisk winter sea air, the trio found themselves in a diner by the marina. Sliding into a booth and breathing warm air into her palms, Donna watched her kids excitedly peruse the menu. She took a glance over it as well, still trying to warm up her palms and remove her hat and scarf. Idly, it crossed her mind that this would be the kind of place  _he_ would like. 

Chess had already strewn her scarf and gloves across the counter and her mind was clearly on other things, but Jack was still bundled up in a ball of coats and scarves and wool. Donna smiled fondly to herself and stood up to reach across the booth, when suddenly, out of the depths of a greasy diner in Hyannis, Massachusetts, came a voice she had never expected to hear again in her life. As cliche as the thought was, the first thing that crossed her mind when she heard the words were  _think of the devil and he shalt appear_ . 

“Donna? Donna Moss?”

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on tumblr @mossdonnatella! if you leave kudos, hugs! if you leave a comment, i'll love YOU forever


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